About the course
The specification has been designed to increase the choice offered to teachers and students studying GCE Geography, allowing for specialisation and progression to higher education and employment. There will be natural progression from GCSE to GCE, ensuring that there is development of content. Students will be given the opportunity to develop fieldwork skills and study geographical issues and impacts. The new specification (taught from 2016 onwards) will excite students’ minds, challenge perceptions and stimulate their investigative and analytical skills. Whilst new units have been added to reflect the world today, you’ll see it’s retained much of the topics you enjoy, including hazards and population.
What they will learn
Contemporary geography is a subject which explicitly engages with the relationship of human populations to each other over space and time and their relationship with their physical environment at a variety of scales from the local to the global.
All units specified in AQA GCE Geography offer opportunities for candidates to consider:
- their own roles, values and attitudes in relation to themes and issues being studied
- the roles, values and attitudes of others including decision-makers.
How it will be assessed
Component 1 – Physical Geography
What is assessed?
Section A – Water and carbon cycles
This section of our specification focuses on the major stores of water and carbon at or near the Earth’s surface and the dynamic cyclical relationships associated with them. These are major elements in the natural environment and understanding them is fundamental to many aspects of physical geography.
Section B – Glacial systems and landscapes
This section of our specification focuses on glaciated landscapes. These are dynamic environments in which landscapes continue to develop through contemporary processes but which mainly reflect former climatic conditions associated with the Pleistocene era. The operation and outcomes of fundamental geomorphological processes and their association with distinctive landscapes are readily observable. In common with water and carbon cycles, a systems approach to study is specified.
Section C – Hazards
This section of our specification focuses on the lithosphere and the atmosphere, which intermittently but regularly present natural hazards to human populations, often in dramatic and sometimes catastrophic fashion. By exploring the origin and nature of these hazards and the various ways in which people respond to them, students are able to engage with many dimensions of the relationships between people and the environments they occupy. Study of this section offers the opportunity to exercise and develop observation skills, measurement and geospatial mapping skills, together with data manipulation and statistical skills, including those associated with and arising from fieldwork.
How is it assessed?
Written exam, 2hours 30 mins. 120 marks
40% of A level.
Structured short and extended questions
Component 2 – Human Geography
What is assessed?
Section A – Global systems and global governance
This section of our specification focuses on globalisation – the economic, political and social changes associated with technological and other driving forces which have been a key feature of global economy and society in recent decades.
Section B – Changing places
This section of our specification focuses on people’s engagement with places, their experience of them and the qualities they ascribe to them, all of which are of fundamental importance in their lives. Students acknowledge this importance and engage with how places are known and experienced, how their character is appreciated, the factors and processes which impact upon places and how they change and develop over time. Through developing this knowledge, students will gain understanding of the way in which their own lives and those of others are affected by continuity and change in the nature of places which are of fundamental importance in their lives.
Section C – Population and the environment
This section of our specification has been designed to explore the relationships between key aspects of physical geography and population numbers, population health and well-being, levels of economic development and the role and impact of the natural environment. Engaging with these themes at different scales fosters opportunities for students to contemplate the reciprocating relationships between the physical environment and human populations and the relationships between people in their local, national and international communities.
How is it assessed?
Written exam, 2hours 30 mins. 120 marks
40% of A level.
Structured short and extended questions
Component 3 – Geography fieldwork investigation
What is assessed?
Students complete an individual investigation which must include data collected in the field. The individual investigation must be based on a question or issue defined and developed by the student relating to any part of the specification content.
All students are required to undertake fieldwork in relation to processes in both physical and human geography. Students must undertake four days of fieldwork during their A-level course. Fieldwork can be completed in a number of ways: locally or further afield, on full days or on part days. Schools and colleges will be required to confirm that all A-level geography students have been given an opportunity to fulfil this requirement.
How is it assessed?
3,000–4,000 words
60 marks
20% of A-level
marked by teachers
moderated by AQA
Exam board
AQA